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Aspects of the Theory of Morphology (Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs) Aspects of the Theory of Morphology ≥ Trends in Linguistics Studies and Monographs 146 Editors Walter Bisang Hans Henrich Hock Werner Winter Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York Aspects of the Theory of Morphology by Igor Mel’cˇuk edited by David Beck Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York Mouton de Gruyter (formerly Mouton, The Hague) is a Division of Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin. The publication of this volume was made possible by the generous financial support of (i) the Alexander Humboldt Foundation, Germany and (ii) the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Țȍ Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mel’cˇuk, Igor, 1932Ϫ Aspects of the theory of morphology / by Igor Mel’cˇuk ; edited by David Beck. p. cm. Ϫ (Trends in linguistics. Studies and monographs ; 146) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-3-11-017711-4 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 3-11-017711-0 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Grammar, Comparative and general Ϫ Morphology. I. Beck, David, 1963Ϫ II. Title. III. Series. P241.M45 2006 4151.9Ϫdc22 2005026841 ISBN-13: 978-3-11-017711-4 ISBN-10: 3-11-017711-0 ISSN 1861-4302 Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Bibliothek Die Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the Internet at Ͻhttp://dnb.ddb.deϾ. ” Copyright 2006 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, D-10785 Berlin All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechan- ical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, with- out permission in writing from the publisher. Cover design: Christopher Schneider, Berlin Typesetting: medionet AG, Berlin Printed in Germany. Contents Phonemic/phonetic transcription adopted in this book xiii Abbreviations and notations xv Introduction 1 The problem stated: A conceptual system for linguistic morphology 3 1. The goal of the book: Definitions of some important linguistic concepts 3 2. The theoretical framework of the book: Meaning-Text Theory 4 3. Characteristics of the linguistic definitions proposed 11 3.1. Substantive aspect of the definitions 12 3.2. Formal aspect of the definitions 16 4. Intermediate concepts used in this book 18 5. The structure of the book 24 6. Acknowledgments 26 Notes 26 PART I. The Syntax-Morphology interface 29 Chapter 1. Agreement, government, congruence 31 1. Introductory remarks 31 2. Three auxiliary concepts 32 2.1. Morphological dependency 32 2.1.1. Notation 33 2.1.2. The concept of morphological dependency: Definition 1.1 34 2.1.3. Comments on Definition 1.1 36 2.2. Agreement class 47 2.2.1. The concept of agreement class: Definition 1.2 47 2.2.2. Comments on Definition 1.2 48 2.2.3. Minimality of an agreement class 53 2.2.4. Agreement class vs. lexical class 54 vi Contents 2.3. A mirroring inflectional category: Definition 1.3 55 2.4. Relationships between the concepts ‘agreement class,’ ‘mirroring category,’ and ‘agreement’ 57 3. Agreement 57 3.1. The concept of agreement: Definition 1.4 58 3.2. Comments on Definition 1.4 58 3.3. Examples of agreement 66 4. Government 83 4.1. The concept of government: Definition 1.5 83 4.2. Comments on Definition 1.5 83 4.3. Examples of government 87 5. Congruence 89 5.1. The concept of congruence: Definition 1.6 89 5.2. Comments on Definition 1.6 89 6. Summing up 92 6.1. Agreement vs. government 92 6.2. Agreement and government in one wordform 93 6.3. Agreement/government and semantic dependencies 95 6.4. Agreement/government and syntactic dependencies 95 6.5. Should agreement/government be called syntactic or morphological? 97 6.6. Other types of morphological dependencies? 98 Notes 98 PART II. Morphology proper 107 II.1. Morphological signifieds 109 Chapter 2. Case 110 1. Introductory remarks 110 2. Three concepts of Case: Definitions 2.1 – 2.3 111 3. Comments on Definitions 2.1 – 2.3 114 4. English ‘Saxon Genitive’ 120 5. External autonomy of case forms 126 6. Do casesI.1b have meanings? 134 7. Taxonomy of casesI.1b 138 8. Internal autonomy of casesI.1b 150 9. Illustrative inventory of possible casesI.1b 151 10. The Russian genitive in numeral phrases: a problematic situation 158 Contents vii 11. ‘Multiple Case’ 159 11.1. Nominal agreement in caseI.2a 159 11.2. Hypostasis 166 11.3. Semantic-syntactic caseI.1b combinations 167 11.4. Compound casesI.1b 167 11.5. CasesI.1a in group inflection 167 12. Main tendencies in the study of case 169 Notes 173 Chapter 3. Voice 181 1. Introductory remarks 181 2. Auxiliary concepts: Definitions 3.1 – 3.6 182 3. The concept of voice: Definition 3.7 190 4. Calculus of possible voices in bi-valent verbs 194 4.1. General remarks 194 4.2. Voice grammemes 199 4.3. Comments on specific topics: passive, middle, reciprocal, impersonal 209 4.3.1. The passive voice 209 4.3.2. The middle voice 213 4.3.3. Is the reciprocal a voice? 215 4.3.4. The term impersonal as applied to voices 216 5. Voice in mono- and multi-valent verbs 218 5.1. Monovalent verbs 219 5.2. Multivalent verbs 221 5.2.1. Different promotional (= full) passives 221 5.2.2. The 2/3-permutative 223 5.2.3. The indirect reflexive 226 6. Four distinct voice categories 227 7. Four infl ectional categories related to voice 230 7.1. Transitivization 230 7.1.1. Introductory remarks 230 7.1.2. Concept of transitivization 231 7.1.3. Illustrations of transitivization 233 7.1.4. ‘Antipassive’ 235 7.2. Verbal focus 236 7.3. Affectedness 242 7.4 Inversion 244 viii Contents 8. Conclusions 248 8.1. Complex voice-like categories 248 8.2. ‘Semantic impurity’ of actual voices 249 8.3. Fickle differences between categories 250 Notes 251 Chapter 4. Case, basic verbal construction, and voice in Maasai 263 1. Introductory remarks 263 2. Case in Maasai 263 2.1. The primary data 263 2.2. The problem stated 266 2.3. The proposal: Changing the names of the cases 267 3. The basic verbal construction in Maasai 269 4. Voice in Maasai 276 Notes 283 II.2. Morphological signifiers 287 Chapter 5. Morphological processes 288 1. Introductory remarks 288 2. The characterization of morphological process 289 2.1. Auxiliary concepts 289 2.2. The concept of morphological process 290 2.3. The inherently additive character of morphological processes 292 3. Typology of morphological processes 294 3.1. Major types of linguistic signs 295 3.2. Major types of morphological processes 297 3.3. Brief survey of morphological processes 298 3.3.1. Compounding 298 3.3.2. Affixation 299 3.3.3. Suprafixation 301 3.3.4. Replication3 301 3.3.5. Modification 302 3.3.6. Conversion3 304 3.4. Hierarchies of morphological processes 306 3.5. Morphological processes and language types 308 4. A special variety of morphological processes: zero processes 308 5. Three current fallacies concerning morphological processes 309 5.1. Suppletion is not a morphological process 309 Contents ix 5.2. Word-creating devices are not morphological processes 310 5.3. Combinations of morphological processes, or multiple exponence 310 6. Non-uniqueness of morphological solutions: methodological principles 313 6.1. A morphological process or a (meaningless) morphological means? 313 6.2. Which morphological process? 315 Notes 318 II.3. Morphological syntactics 321 Chapter 6. Gender and noun class 322 1. Introductory remarks 322 2. Gender1 vs. Class1 323 3. Gender1 324 3.1. The concept of gender1: Definition 6.1 324 3.2. Comments on Definition 6.1 325 3.3. Examples of gender1 systems 330 3.4. Semantic motivation of genders1 334 3.5. Gender1 neutralization 336 3.6. Marked/unmarked character of genders1 339 3.7. Problematic genders1: two case studies 341 3.8. Double noun classification 345 4. (Noun) class1 346 4.1. The concept of noun class1: Definition 6.2 346 4.2. Comments on Definition 6.2 347 4.3. Examples of class1 systems 349 4.4. Establishing a noun class1 system: a methodological problem 367 5. Genders1, classes1 or neither? Three case studies 371 6. Syntactic genders1/classes1 vs. morphological genders1/classes1 378 Notes 379 II.4. Morphological signs 383 Chapter 7. Morph and morpheme 384 1. Introductory remarks 384 2. Definitions of the concepts ‘morph’ and ‘morpheme’ 384 3. Comments on morphs and morphemes 389 x Contents 3.1. Morph and quasimorph 389 3.2. Morpheme 390 3.3. Allomorphs 397 4. Discussion of the concepts introduced 399 4.1. What is the use of the proposed concept of morpheme? 399 4.2. Fused expression of two or more morphemes: megamorph 400 4.3. A difficulty in the definition of morpheme 401 Notes 403 Chapter 8. Suppletion 405 1. Introductory remarks 405 2. The concept of suppletion 405 2.1. An informal characterization of suppletion 405 2.2. A rigorous definition of suppletion: Definition 8.3 407 2.3. Examples of suppletion 410 2.4. Comments on Definition 8.3 412 2.4.1. The rationale for the conditions in Definition 8.3 413 2.4.2. Definition 8.3 vs. traditional definitions of suppletion 415 2.4.3.
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